The siting of the headgear atop the shafthead building wasn’t unusual, although the backstays are supported by the winding house meaning that no part touches the ground. However, it’s certainly unique in the context of the other remaining headgear in the UK, and made all the more prominent by the demolition of the previous mining…
Tag: Coal Mine
#567 – Barnsley Main Colliery 1
I first saw Barnsley Main Colliery in (I think) 1994 when I visited Oakwell, the home of Barnsley Football Club for a Division 1 game against my team Bolton Wanderers. It was a wretched, soaking wet day, and the ancient wooden stand we sat in kept us relatively dry compared to the unfortunate souls on…
#566 – Astley Green Colliery 2
As the gates were shut and preparations for a post-lockdown reopening were still underway, I had to limit my photography to the view from the gate. This is where the camera on my phone comes in handy, as being able to poke it through the bars on the gate gave me a different perspective to…
#565 – Astley Green Colliery 1
Astley Green Colliery is only a 30 minute drive down the M61 from me, but I’ve not been since 2012, so I decided that my first post-lockdown jaunt would be for a quick look. As of the time of the visit (June 27th 2020), the place hadn’t yet reopened for visitors, but that was fine…
#559 – Book review – The Last Years of Coal Mining in Yorkshire
In doing some online research for my blog articles I stumbled across a series of books by Steve Grudgings. Two of these cover the last days of the South Wales coalfield, and the other one was this one on Yorkshire. Regrettably, I never got round to photographing the few collieries that remained in Yorkshire until…
#558 – Hatfield Colliery 3
As a black and white photographer, I try to start thinking about how I want the final image to look when I am at the location. As I am shooting digital, the file is a colour file and while I know that you can preview and save JPEG’s as black and white in camera, I…
#557 – Hatfield Colliery 2
My drone now accompanies me if I am going somewhere suitable to fly it, and Hatfield seemed a suitable opportunity to give it a fly. As I’m not using the drone regularly (it’s not my primary camera), I’m still getting my head round how to use the drone in my photography and how to compose…
#556 – Hatfield Colliery 1
Britain’s coal mining industry has been in a long slow decline for decades. It’s been well documented elsewhere and is an emotive subject that I have no wish to get bogged down with. But with the recent drive to lower carbon emissions, the closure of the coal fired power stations has seen a dramatic reduction…
#548 – Review of the decade – 2016
A more stable role at work meant I had more time to focus on photography and an opportunity fell into my lap – a commission from a PR company working for O2 who wanted to use me for a job. I also revisited two sites from a few years back, visited a re-opened Mancunian cotton…
#546 – Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Industrial Visions at The National Museum, Cardiff
I try to go to a few photographic exhibitions a year, normally in the North of England. But when I heard that The National Museum in Cardiff were exhibiting work by Bernd and Hilla Becher, I started to make plans for a trip as their work is rarely exhibited in the U.K. As an added…
Mechanical Landscapes 